For Gillard & Roxon: A lesson in one easy sentence on the folly of a nation health information database

A server storing sensitive patient information for more than 230,000 people was breached by unknown hackers so they could use its resources to host the wildly popular Call of Duty: Black Ops computer game. [The Register, 14 January 2011]

I can almost see the demand for bigger, better Clarence River levee walls starting

On 21 January 2010 The Daily Examiner ran articles pointing to the findings of a paper presented at 47th Annual Floodplain Management Authorities Of NSW Conference on 27 February–2 March 2007 at Gunnedah, titled BIG LEVEES – ARE THEY A GOOD IDEA?, authored by Drew Bewsher & John Maddocks of Bewsher Consulting Pty, Ltd, Sydney and Ian Dinham of Clarence Valley Council, Grafton.

One of these newspaper articles was careful to inform Clarence Valley residents that overtopping existing levees would have a warning period of only hours:

The paper states that the amount of time communities had to respond varied from town to town. In Maclean, modelling suggests the 100-year flood would overtop the levee there within just three hours.
Grafton comes out a bit more fortunate, taking about 10 hours before the town became inundated with water.

While the conference paper in question did point to some levee wall risk factors (see below), it finally came out in favour of the idea of levee walls in the final paragraph; This is not to say that we shouldn’t build big levees. Depending on site limitations.

Almost as a matter of course it totally ignored the fact that these upriver levee walls make unprotected downriver small villages like Iluka and Yamba more vulnerable during major flooding.

I think it was no accident that at least one Clarence Valley shire councillor made a rather gullible local journalist (renowned for rarely seeking alternative viewpoints) aware of this conference paper – it certainly paves the way to lengthen or create new upriver levees, despite the numerous qualifications it contains.

The former of these two gentleman would be well aware that community pressure on the back of national debate will demand more, not less, physical protection as populations unrealistically squat on ancient floodplains and, it is highly unlikely that either he or his fellow councillors will deny these demands with that last paragraph cop out just waiting to be quoted in any debate within the Chamber.

The Impact of Levees on the Flood Risk

Levees are built to reduce the flood risk to a community. They may be particularly useful in eliminating small or nuisance floods, and depending on their height, may also havesome success in mitigating larger floods. The flood risk to the community ‘protected’ bythe levee is reduced – up to the point that the levee is overtopped or it fails. After thispoint, there may be rapid inundation of the previously ‘protected’ area and deep inundation depths, resulting in a very high flood hazard to residents and occupiers of the area. In some cases, evacuation routes may be cut at an early stage, leaving occupants isolated and trapped in extremely dangerous conditions. In smaller catchments, there may be little warning that the levee will overtop, and virtually no time for the community torespond. There is also the threat of catastrophic levee failure, either before overtoppingor shortly afterwards.When the levee does overtop, the risk and threat to life will nearly always be greater (and often significantly greater) than when there was no levee. When the probabilities and consequences of all sizes of floods are considered, those thatovertop the levee and those that don’t, it may be that in some levee situations where the consequences of overtopping are disastrous, that the levee actually represents a netincrease in flood risk, not a reduction. Clearly where high levees are already ‘protecting’ extensive urban areas andcommunities are complacent about the consequences of overtopping, public awarenessinitiatives are essential to initially establish, and to then maintain the community in a ‘floodready’ state so that the flood risks can be mitigated.

If Baby Boomers were worried aged care might be stuffed by the time they turned 75 - worry no more

Read and enjoy current aged care recommendations in the Caring For Older Australians: Draft report presented to the Gillard Government by the Productivity Commission and released on 21 January 2011.

Less direct accountability for government, less transparency if that is actually possible, a freer hand for aged care providers (including the ability to palm-off aged care bed categories with low profit margins) and the potential for all manner of agencies to increase costs on a whole range of services (including removing the cap on high care accommodation charges), ‘supported’ beds for low-income frail aged eventually assigned to the lowest tenders, a more market-driven provision of aged care services for special needs groups, and as an added bonus, the continuing option of being faced with no nursing home bed available in the area in which you live in your retirement – I give you A framework for assessing aged care: draft recommendations.

However, as has been the case down the centuries, if you enter old age with significant assets and investments you will still be able to afford the best on offer and probably do a little better out of those same proposed aged care provisions.

The entire report can be found here.

We have all been invited to examine this report and make written submissions to the Productivity Commission by Monday 21 March 2011.
Email agedcare@pc.gov.au for further information

One response to urban sinkholes caused by flood waters in the Clarence Valley

Jules Faber cartoon in The Daily Examiner 17 January 2011.
Jules professional résumé can be found at JulesFaber.com

Monsanto-Mahyco GM eggplant toxicity study receives a fail from researcher - wonder what the opinion will be on Monsanto's latest SDA soybean effort?

Slowly, study by study, faith in the safety of food on supermarket shelves is being eroded.

From those such as A comparison of the effects of three GM corn varieties on mammalian health (which in 2009 threw doubt on the reliability of Monsanto findings and whose authors apparently successfully defended against defamatory claims by the biotech lobby) to the BT BRINJAL Event EE1 The Scope and Adequacy of the GEAC Toxicological Risk Assessment: Review of Oral Toxicity Studies in Rats (November 14, 2010 by Dr Lou M Gallagher, PhD, Wellington, New Zealand) which found:

SUMMARY

This evaluation of Bt brinjal studies is based on requirements for a rigorous evaluation of food safety for the people of India and their health. Departures from Indian and international published standards for the 14‐day and 90‐day studies are a cause for concern 1.

The current food safety studies for Bt brinjal were not conducted in accordance with published standards, did not accurately summarize results, and ignored toxic endpoints for rats fed Bt brinjal: in particular, rats fed Bt brinjal for 78 out of 90 days (only one dose level) experienced:

• organ and system damage: ovaries at half their normal weight, enlarged spleens with white blood cell counts at 35 to 40 percent higher than normal with elevated eosinophils, indicating immune function changes.

• toxic effects to the liver as demonstrated by elevated bilirubin and elevated plasma acetylcholinesterase.

Major health problems among test animals were ignored in these reports. The single test dose used was lower than recommended by the Indian protocols. Release of Bt brinjal for human consumption cannot be recommended given the current evidence of toxicity to rats in just 90 days and the studies' serious departures from normal scientific standards.

So, if this is the true state of affairs concerning the humble eggplant once it was unconventionally altered, what hope is there that Monsanto's virtual minion in all things genetically modified Food Standards Australia New Zealand will actually have conducted the following stated process?

FSANZ has not previously assessed a GM food crop with a consumer focused nutritional modification.
FSANZ will need to undertake a safety assessment of high scientific complexity and include a nutritional assessment, which is not normally required for GM crops expressing agronomic traits.
This Application is anticipated to involve an assessment of the risk to public health and safety of above average complexity.

Well might you ask because this is what FSANZ found and signed off on:

On the basis of the data provided in the present Application, and other available information, food derived from soybean MON87769 is as safe for human consumption as other commercially available soybean varieties.

Basically telling Australian consumers that a genetically modified enriched soybean food will be safe to eat because the patent-owner Monsanto says that this is so and, this say so probably doesn't involve any in-depth animal studies because FSANZ does not normally require this level of safety assessment.

Will you be feeding any form of soybean product to your children after May 2011?

Given the lax GM food labelling laws in Australia - would you even know if you were?

Is there "Something Rotten in the State of Windsor?"

From A Clarence Valley Protest on 17 January 2011:

The Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia's Inquiry into the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in Regional Australia is one strange entity.

Throwing process transparency to the wind, it is now selectively publishing copies of the 535 submissions received to date.

This is a snapshot example of what the list looked like on 17 January 2011 after the first 160 submissions:

So what is being hidden? Naive submissions of which there were already plenty in the first 160 received? A committee or secretariat in organizational disarray?
Or is it that the Chair just doesn't want the bulk of the over 300 unpublished submissions out in the public arena before the mainstream media reports on the public hearings and the Committee delivers its findings?

It goes without saying that such questions would not even come to mind if submissions had been published in the order in which these were received and not as this highly selective hotch potch.

Just who is it that Australia needs protecting from?

On 18 January 2011 yet another national political party has been registered by the Australian Electoral Commission.

This one is called the Australian Protectionist Party.

A small hint as to its world view can be found on the official website homepage at the moment, with headline grabbers like;
Media Admits that Nick Griffin Has Been Right all Along over Muslim Paedophile Gangs and Say no to a Caliphate in Australia, say no to Shari’a in Australia! A vigil against Hizb ut-Tahrir.

While a current poll asks Should we ban the building of Mosques in Australia? and yet another post trumpets Left-wing extremists declare war on our freedom of speech!

As a final example of the mindset one cannot go past its apparent support of Creationism being taught in Australian schools in this 19 March 2010 press release titled; Protectionists Condemn Government Intolerance.

The registered officer of this new political party is one Andrew Phillips, who according to a 2007 Destiny newsletter:

.....has had a long involvement in Australian politics, having been the Senate team leader for the One Nation Party in South Australia, and is now the National Chairman for the Australian Protectionist Party. This article is purely written in his capacity as an independent political commentator. For more of his independent political articles, see the South Australian site for the Australian Protectionist Party....